FEMA’s disaster fund may go broke by Tuesday

FEMA’s disaster relief fund helped pay for cleanup after the recent tornadoes in Joplin, Mo.
(Mike Gullett - AP)
States and cities affected by recent natural disasters may be not be able to get federal relief starting Tuesday if Congress doesn’t act this weekend to shore up funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

As of Friday morning, FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund had just $175 million and will likely be empty next week for the first time in its history, the agency said. It is consulting with White House lawyers to determine what to do if funds dry up.

“The administration is committed to doing all it can under current legal authorities to continue vital operations, including assistance to individuals,” FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Racusen said in an e-mail. “But there is no question this is a critical situation and one we are watching closely.”

The disaster fund pays for all costs associated with presidentially declared disasters, including individual and public assistance payments and operational costs. Agency officials, who prefer to keep the fund flush with about $1 billion, quickly drained the account in late September after Hurricane Irene caused significant damage across 12 states and Puerto Rico.

FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate
(Mark Wilson - Getty Images)
Before the hurricane made landfall, FEMA suspended payments for earlier disasters to pay for Irene-related cleanup efforts. Repeating steps that have been taken several times over the last decade, the move means further delay for at least $447 million worth of projects in 42 states, where officials are eager to close the books on long-standing reconstruction and mitigation projects.

In North Dakota, a state ravaged in recent years by blizzards and floods, the delays are trying up traffic. The state is waiting for at least $13.3 million to pay for 97 projects to elevate or repave roads, according to FEMA figures.

Meantime, washed-out roads and impassable bridges are forcing drivers in rural communities to take detours as long as an hour to get home from work, according to Mary Singer, an emergency management official with Burleigh County, N.D., which encompasses Bismarck.

FEMA’s prolonged application and payment process means some rural areas are waiting months for FEMA disaster assessment teams to arrive, and then months longer for the payment of federal dollars, Singer said. Any delay makes it more difficult to complete flood-related reconstruction projects before the ground freezes for the Winter.

“We realize that blizzards and flooding aren’t as exciting to some people as hurricanes are,” Singer said, “but this is something that North Dakota has almost been perpetually dealing with in the last three to five years.”

And, she added, those hour-long detours “are a lot for a citizen to do day after day while they wait for Congress to reappropriate the Disaster Relief Fund.”

In Ohio, Doug Cade, the chief engineer of Lawrence County, is dealing with 108 landslides and 192 damaged bridges along 388 miles of county roads. He’s waiting for $43,186 in federal funding so he can start repaving roads washed out in May by torrential rainstorms — and has up to 300 other sites that also may be eligible for FEMA dollars.

The agency’s damage assessment teams are fanning out across southern Ohio to survey sites, but if disaster funds are depleted they might have to pack up and leave, forcing Cade to rewrite his budget. In a normal year, Cade would spend about $400,000 repaving 50 miles of road, but he has already appropriated that money for cleanup costs.

“Eventually we’d like to see all of the roads in our county in good condition,” Cade said. “It’s not something that an influx of money at one time is going to solve.”

The holdups are forcing an untold number of cities and towns to put off a host of projects, according to Des Moines, Iowa, Mayor Frank Crownie, who chairs an emergency management committee for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Crownie’s city is waiting for up to $6 million to negotiate buyouts with 62 homeowners along a tributary to the Des Moines River that flooded in 2010. The uprooted families are eager to move on, he said.

“I just think it’s a shame that we’re playing politics with people’s lives,” Crownie said. “People rely on the federal government to respond. Those people that we elected, we want them to respond.”

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